Saddam Hussein executed

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Clutching a Koran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein went to
the gallows before sunrise in Baghdad today, executed by vengeful
countrymen after a quarter of a century of remorseless brutality
that killed countless thousands and led Iraq into disastrous wars
against the United States and Iran.

In Baghdad's Shi'ite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the
streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate the former
dictator's death. The government did not impose a round-the-clock
curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any
surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader. Despite his
ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain
mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists
and a vicious sectarian conflict.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went
outside to shoot his gun into the air after he heard the news.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got
his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shi'ite
town 130 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"We are looking for a new page of history despite the tragedy of
the past," said Saif Ibrahim, a 26-year-old Baghdad resident.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power
base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God
will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain
because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya
al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

As a security precaution, police blocked the entrances to Tikrit
and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four
days.

State-run Iraqiya television initially reported that Saddam's
half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former
chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, also were hanged.
However, three officials later said only Saddam was executed.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National
Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told Iraqiyah.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Saddam struggled when he
was taken from his cell in an American military prison but was
composed in his last moments.

He said Saddam was clad completely in black, with a jacket,
trousers, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb.

Shortly before the execution, Saddam's hat was removed and
Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something, al-Askari said.

"No I don't want to," al-Askari, who was present at the
execution, quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam repeated a prayer after
a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his
head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put
around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be
victorious and Palestine is Arab'."

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence
headquarters in Baghdad's Shi'ite neighbourhood of Kazimiyah,
al-Askari said. The neighbourhood is home to the Iraqi capital's
most important Shi'ite shine, the Imam Kazim shrine.

Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with
Saddam's body.

Photographs and video footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.

"He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Koran and said:
'I want this Koran to be given to this person,' a man he called
Bander," he said. Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander
was.

"Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his
death," al-Rubaie said. "Saddam's execution was 100 per cent Iraqi
and the American side did not interfere."

The TV station earlier was airing national songs after the first
announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's
execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

US President George W Bush said Saddam's execution marks the
"end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops"
and cautioned that his death will not halt the violence in Iraq.
The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for US
troops in Iraq, with the toll reaching 108.

Yet, Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas,
"it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a
democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an
ally in the war on terror".

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said
Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who
commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of
any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil
soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose
hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take
part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and
sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shi'ite
Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in
1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal on Monday and
ordered him executed within 30 days.

US troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on
television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in
eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's
death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were
none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it
was that we had to put him on trial," said one soldier, Thomas
Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be
the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha,
the Islamic world's largest holiday, which marks the end of the
Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. Many Muslims celebrate by
sacrificing domestic animals, usually sheep.